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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Future of NBA’s Sacramento Kings still up in the air

The NBA’s Sacramento Kings still don’t know where they’ll be playing next season and according to league commissioner David Stern on April 19 the club will have to wait until May to find out. The Kings will either remain in Sacramento or will head north to Seattle, Washington. Stern originally told the franchise he would have an answer by April 19 during the NBA’s board of governors meetings. However, the finance and relocation committees are asking for more time to study the options.

The committees will meet again in the near future and will then make a recommendation to the board of governors where the Kings should play. The Kings, who are owned by the Maloof family, have been the topic of relocation talks for over a year now. The Maloofs have made it be known that they would like the NBA to move the team to Seattle as they’ve agreed to sell the club to an investment group there.

However, a group in Sacramento has also put in a bid for the team in an attempt to keep it in the capital of California. Stern said he should get the report from the by April 29n and the final vote by the board should take place by May 10 at the latest. Stern said the two offers for the franchise were close and it’s been reported that the offer for 65 per cent controlling interest in the club was raised to $550 million from $525 million by the Seattle group which is led by Chris Hansen.

Stern said it’s going to be a heartbreaking decision regardless of which city will get the team next season. He admitted that it’s the first time in the past 47 years that he doesn’t really know what the answer to the problem should be. He added that the whole situation has been quite confusing and difficult for all of those involved. Adam Silver, the deputy commissioner of the NBA, said the deadline has been extended due to legal reasons and the importance of the decision.
Silver said the league would have preferred to resolve the issue in a shorter time frame, it isn’t about to take any shortcuts during the process. Hansen’s group agreed to buy control of the team in January and the paperwork to relocate the franchise was filed. Hansen plans on calling the team the SuperSonics and will play their home games at the city’s KeyArena. However, they also plan on building a brand new arena for the club.

Former NBA player Kevin Johnson, who is also the mayor of Sacramento, has put together a group that desperately wants to keep the franchise in their city. They are also planning on building a new arena for the team. Stern said he’d love to have a basketball team in both cities, but the NBA won’t be expanding to 31 teams to accommodate them. He hasn’t ruled out expansion in the future, but said it’s not something that’s on the current agenda.

The league will continue to look over both bids as well as the proposals for new arenas and where the funding will come from. The Maloofs’ said they don’t see eye to eye with the group from Sacramento and would like the NBA to approve the sale to the Seattle investors. A minimum of 23 franchise owners need to approve selling the team to Hansen’s group and 16 of them need to vote for relocation.